Let Four Freedoms Ring! Rep. Maloney Delivers $500k in Federal Funds for FDR Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island

New York, NY – Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan & Queens) today presented a mock check from the federal government for $500,000 to officials charged with creating the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island. The display check symbolizes the half-million dollar appropriation that Congresswoman Maloney helped secure to support the Park’s construction.

Representative Maloney presented the mock check at today’s ceremony to Ambassador William vanden Heuvel, Chair of the Four Freedoms Park Board of Directors; Four Freedoms’ President and Chief Executive Officer, Sally Minard; and its Executive Director, Gina Pollara. The Congresswoman was also joined at today’s event by City Council Member Jessica Lappin, State Assembly Member Micah Kellner, and Erik Bottcher, a Special Assistant to New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“The Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park will be a beautiful, must-see attraction for Roosevelt Islanders, New Yorkers, and visitors from all over the world. I am proud to have helped lead the successful effort to secure federal funds to support the creation of this extraordinary amenity,” said Congresswoman Maloney, who has represented Roosevelt Island in Congress since 1993.
 
Ambassador William vanden Heuvel, Chair of the Four Freedoms Park Board of Directors, said, “We are so pleased to be able to complete the landscaping of FDR Four Freedoms Park with the money secured from Congress by Rep. Maloney. Her tireless work on behalf of this new park and memorial is greatly appreciated and we look forward to celebrating the opening of FDR Four Freedoms Park with her in October.”

“It is entirely appropriate that the government of the United States is helping to underwrite an extraordinary park and monument dedicated to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” said Congresswoman Maloney in her remarks at the event. “It will be the only memorial to one of our nation’s greatest leaders to be sited in the city where he and his wife Eleanor made their home for years. The Four Freedoms Park will be a beautiful and welcoming public open space honoring the historic legacy of a great president whose inspirational leadership helped guide America’s greatest generation through the catastrophic Great Depression and the cataclysmic events of World War II,” said Congresswoman Maloney.  She also thanked colleagues at all levels of government, including U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Assembly Member Kellner, and Council Member Lappin.

City Council Member Jessica Lappin, who represents Roosevelt Island and who helped spearhead the successful effort to secure $5 million in City funding for Four Freedoms Park, joined Congresswoman Maloney and other community leaders at today’s event. “When Four Freedoms Park opens this fall, it will be a world-class Big Apple destination. I'm proud to have secured funding, along with Congresswoman Maloney, to build the only monument for FDR in his home state,” said Councilwoman Lappin.

State Assembly Member Micah Kellner, who represents Roosevelt Island in the State Legislature and who helped secure two State appropriations totaling $6 million to help construct Four Freedoms Park, said, “Congratulations to Representative Maloney for securing this critical funding for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. It brings the late Louis I. Kahn's last architectural vision one step closer to completion.”

Background:
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park is the only memorial dedicated to the former President in his home state of New York. Located on a triangular four-acre plot on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in the East River in the heart of New York City, the Park will include walkways lined with trees, a statue of the Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a granite monument symbolizing the celebrates the “Four Freedoms” described in President Roosevelt’s historic January 6, 1941 State of the Union speech: freedom of speech and expression; freedom of religion; freedom from want; and freedom from fear. First envisioned in 1973 by the late Governor Nelson Rockefeller and other visionary urban planners, the monument’s design was the last work of the late Louis I. Kahn, one of the iconic architects of the 20th century.

The park’s construction is being managed by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park LLC, led by the Chair of its Board of Directors, former Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel; its President and Chief Executive Officer, Sally Minard; and its Executive Director, Gina Pollara.
The funding for the Park that Congresswoman Maloney helped secure was included in the federal budget as a Transportation and Housing & Urban Development appropriation.

For more information visit: www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org/.